Tutorial: Help with commissions

[FrostHeart]

I'm still fairly new to the art world. I plan to start accepting commissions when I get more skilled, and get access to a PC and art apps. I want to know more because I know nothing about commissions except that they can make you good money based on your skills in art.

 

[MissNook]

Hi there!

Well first thing first, you should begin to think of two things:

1. Legal matters: you can do commissions and gain money but depending on your country there are laws about your status, how much you can gain without having to pay taxes and things like that.
2. Administrative matters: how will you be paid? By paypal? If yes, will you use a personal account or will you create a more professional account? (note that you can have your Paypal closed for review if they think you're not who you're telling you are, if you gain too much money and it gets suspicious that you're a professional using a personal account and so on). If you plan on doing NSFW commissions you may have issues with Paypal since they state in their terms that you can't do porn business with your account (this can go to your money being kept by Paypal for a while before you can have it, to your account being closed down, so be careful)

Following this there's what you should do to open commissions. Here's how I would go through it:

1. Create your terms of services. In those you will state things like if you do WIP, refund, what means of payment you will take, what rights your customer will have with the art they paid (for example, you usually sell commissions only for personal use, because for commercial use, the prices are way way higher because you're selling your rights on the piece). Don't hesitate to look at others Terms of Services (or ToS) to see how it's done.
2. Create a commission sheet (or several, for example if you want one for SFW and one for NSFW). Make it clear and readable. Don't put too much info in it. Usually you would put the kind of commissions you take, for example: sketch, lineart, colored, their prices, the additional prices (additional characters, background and so on) and examples of those so that your customers would know what kind of render and result they may expect. Also you can put your means of payment there or in the description of your commission sheet with the link to your ToS.
3. If you begin to have more than one commission at a time, I suggest to create a trello or another kind of to-do list. That will help you to keep track of what you have to do and your deadlines and also you can give a link to your customers so that they can follow your progress

Please note that I never opened commissions myself but I did a lot of researches because I wanted too then changed my mind. I still think I'm pretty knowledgeable in the matter.
I hope that helps!